


Growth Spurt

by Womble1



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28987758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Womble1/pseuds/Womble1
Summary: Does Alan look a little taller to you?
Kudos: 16





	Growth Spurt

Carefully calibrated robotic arms, precision engineering, finely tuned mechanisms all meticulously designed by Brains. How many hours had been put into perfecting the launch sequences? Brains didn't want to think about it. But now all of those calculations were being thrown out of sequence, but how, what could possibly throw a spanner into all those mechanical marvels? Brains had not taken into consideration a teenagers tendency towards growth spurts. He just hadn’t thought to include that organic variable into his calculations and now he was cursing his own lack of forethought. It really was rather inconvenient of Alan to continue growing, he had been about the same height as Gordon at the time, so Brains had thought he was done growing, well as much as he had thought about it all. Really with hindsight he should have worked out some averages from the other brothers and maybe plotted a probable growth curve, but that was hindsight, and didn’t really help any of them right now. 

Right now Alan was pinned, robotic arms held rigid in an emergency stop position when it had become clear that he himself was blocking the robot appendages from completing their choreographed movements. Now the programming was stuck, it knew it couldn't move forward, because there was a blockage (Alan) in the way, but it also had to complete the sequence and didn't know how to back it all up. While it tried to get its computerised mind around the problem, Alan was stuck, breathing very shallowly, as he became aware of how much he had shot up recently, the suit had gone from snug to beyond snug alarmingly quickly in the time he had been nursing a busted right arm. This was worse than that time Virgil had burst a seam on his uniform after a little too much over indulging whilst nursing a broken leg. At least his uniform hadn’t included body armor that really did pinch in all the wrong places. Even his toes were squished and starting to cramp, and all Brains seemed to be doing was standing there with a frown on his face like Alan had done this just to personally spite him. Gordon had also climbed down the launch shoot earlier just to get a photo for “the archives” as he put it. The only upside for Alan was that this did prove that he was now taller than Gordon, no longer the shortest, and no amount of embarrassing photos was going to change that, so stuff that in your album short stuff! Oh yes, Alan had a lot of short jokes saved up, and he was going to make sure he used every single one. There wasn't much point in saving them in case he got taller than Virgil too, the tank could bench press his way out of any sized based mockery, and was so laid back that it really took all the fun out of it. But first of all, he needed to get out of here, and into some uniform that fitted, so much for his grand reentry into action, thank god it had just been for a test flight. 

Brains continued to tap a finger against his folded arms in time with his thought process, the frown staying firmly in place.

“Any luck Brains?” Virgil's voice drifted down the tunnel from where he was stationed further back near a junction box

“What? Huh? No, I j-just don’t know how I could have m-missed it in my calculations, the variables… it should have been obvious…”

“But have you released the emergency mechanism? Can I restart it yet?” Virgil's voice cut through Brain’s drifting monologue  
“Oh no, I haven’t, o-one second.” a quick flip of a concealed switch “there we are, you're good to go V-virgil!” the arms retracted and the pressure lessened on Alans chestplate

“Seriously!” wailed Alan, “that's all it took?” Alan stared at Brains in disbelief as his launch seat glided past the engineer, retracing its earlier trajectory. Leaving Brains still pondering what variables he should have included and vowing to stick to robots in future, they didn't go and grow when you weren't looking and mess up all your careful work.

“Right short stuff, better get you measured up for a new uniform then!” announced Virgil as Alan came into view around the corner. 

Short Stuff? oh your time will come brother, thought Alan, soon the boot will be on the other foot, maybe he will save a few short jokes for Virgil after all.


End file.
